Big advantage for BrickLink: the loyalty of it's members to
the LEGO Brand

Big DISadvantage for BrickLink: the loyalty of it's members
to the LEGO Brand .....

At the conference in Cologne, where you told us about these long-term plans,
all mayor sellers encouraged you to think better about it.
You didn't.

Due to the Website- and policy-changes of the past 1,5 year, all mayor sellers
have encountered a huge loss on sales. From most of us your monthly revenue dropped
to 50% or less!! Thus missing 1000's of Dollars every month.

But we have to sell the millions of parts from our warehouses! If BrickLink isnot listening to years of experience, you force us to wire our fees to
BrickOwl, BrickScout and others.

I've changed my store Name, to show my commitment to the best Brand
in the World: LEGO

Hazel and I were discussing things we'd like to see changed for BL2 and inventories
and I've already submitted this suggestion privately, but I'd like to
gauge the opinions of the inventory submitters on it.

When LEGO bring out new themes and sets, there are very often a lot of new parts
and figs that go along with it. At the moment the inventory submitters adds
the new parts to the catalog and then completes the inventory and should make
a note of all the missing pieces pending approval in the catalog in the notes
section.

However, completing the inventory then relies on the manual process of the submitter
or the IA keeping an eye out for when those parts are approved and then completing
the inventory.

I propose the following:
When new parts are pending approval into the catalog they CAN be included in
the inventory, but the system recognises them as not approved and consequently
disables the function to approve the inventory. The inventory can be updated
still by the submitter or IA but until all of the parts are approved (or the
non-approved ones deleted from the inventory); the inventory can not be approved.

To go with this where will also be a count of how many pending approval parts
there are for a particular inventory which will update when a part is approved.

If a part in the inventory is then rejected from the catalog a message to the
IA and submitter is auto generated by the system so that we can follow up on
it.

I have also requested that a flag be added to inventory submissions form to show
whether the inventory is complete or incomplete and if incomplete then the submitter
MUST add information to the notes field detailing why it is incomplete and if
they are still working on it.

Incomplete entries will automatically be disabled from being approved until flagged
as complete.

Inventories with items pending approval into the catalog will automatically be
flagged as incomplete.

Looking at my list of pending approval inventories, the sets with items pending
approval for the catalog appear to be the biggest reason for being not approved
so I think if we can have these new features this will help us all a bit.

Emma

Seems reasonable given the large amount of new molds. If 500 new molds are being
released a year, it is tough to allow all of that to jam up the inventory submission
process.

I think that another important component is that some of this is going to need
to be crowdsourced. As it stands now some of the inventories and part approvals
sit waiting for the submitter to make changes and updates or to add photos, but
there is no real reason that everyone shouldn't be able to chip in if possible.
I understand the "credit" issue, but BL may have to move away from that system
(or allow for dual/partial credit).

IA's would still make final approvals, but allow the community to get the
items and inventories to that point.

Scott

I agree very much with both of you. Emma and I discussed this already in person.
The credit issue should not be an ´issue´ at all:
This whole fantastic Database is a community thing, created by ´us´ for everyone.
Having personal ´credits´ has nothing to do with ´community´...
For me personally it´s quite simple: I am a parts seller, and if I have an early
copy (well, many...) of a set, I want to sell the parts a.s.a.p.
That means I put some time and effort in it to get the new parts inventoried
and pictured as fast as possible.
Credit for that work? Who cares? The pics and parts must be visible and known
because I want to sell them!
So, at the bottom line I inventory sets for ´myself´ first, which benefits the
community too.... be all honest and think about that....

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